Lead researcher, Dr Helen Paterson from the School of Psychology said sharing memories can contaminate people’s recollections and create false memories.
“A false memory is the recollection of an event, or details of an event, that did not actually occur,” she said.
“My research focuses on how people can contaminate each other’s memories for an event by discussing it with one another.”
Dr Paterson said a key finding of the research was that misleading information presented through discussion with another person who observed the event can also lead to memory distortion. [continue reading…]
Specific neurons in undamaged parts of the brain can remodel themselves.
A Menzies Research Institute study, recently published in the international neuroscience journal Cerebral Cortex describes how nerve cells change their structure in response to the trauma.
About one Australian in 45 has acquired brain injury.
Two out of three of these people will acquire their brain injury before they turn 25 years old. Three out of every four people with acquired brain injury are men.
In Tasmania it is estimated that each year 2,500 people acquire a brain injury. [continue reading…]
In 1993 Conchy Bretos was appointed Florida secretary for aging and adult services, a position that allowed her to see the thousands of low-income elders and disabled adults who were not getting the services they needed to stay in their homes. Bretos became the driving force behind the nation’s first public housing project to bring assisted living services to older adults who just need a little help to stay in their homes. Now she runs a consulting company that has helped 40 public housing projects nationwide bring assisted living services to their residents. The video preview is of her discussion with Dr. Ruth A. Shapiro as part of the Commonwealth Club of California’s Social Entrepreneurship in America series.
What makes something funny? Philosophers have been tossing that question around since Plato. Now two psychological scientists think they’ve come up with the formula: humor comes from a violation or threat to the way the world ought to be that is, at the same time, benign. [continue reading…]